"Remobilising workers without risking a COVID-19-related medical overload will require effective modelling to guide public policy. Applying multiple techniques, this column studies the factors engendering the empirical shape of mortality curves from the onset of the pandemic to local peaks, with a focus on how policy intensity interacted with structural variables. Accounting for global diffusion patterns, it finds that more stringent policies were associated with significantly lower mortality growth rates, which took longer to peak in countries considered more democratically free and those further from the equator. "

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